Flawed but Important

Solms' work is interesting and valuable. It might even be important. The book is difficult and problematic however. Solms never manages to fully connect the dots (I recommend going straight to the postscript to find out what these dots are). There is much of value in his account of affect and its significance, but his approach to what he (following many others) calls the hard problem of consciousness is based on a sophism. The hard problem of consciousness is to explain how neural correlates of consciousness, together with an account of their functionality, leads to the experience of qualia - the particular character of conscious awareness. Solms has developed an interesting theory of these correlates and their function. Consciousness is affect: it is the hedonic registering and comparison of both internal and external or contextual states (this state is good, this state is bad; get me out of here now...). He calls this preference wrangling and associated demands for action "feeling". But then he wonders how could a feeling not be felt? Feelings must be like something: they must be qualia.

The hard problem of consciousness is left hanging because Solms nowhere explains why all this wrangling of preferences couldn't happen "in the dark". Calling them feelings simply begs the question. It's a shame because the book would be better if Solms had stuck with the easy problem of consciousness - a problem which is not easy and is, in any case, much more important than the hard problem. Indeed, the hard problem of consciousness is a philosophical mess and requires a philosophical clean-up: either by way of an extravagant metaphysical theory such as David Chalmers' - discussed at length in Solms' book - or by disarming the problem, showing that it is based on a confusion. (See the classic paper "Quining Qualia" by Daniel Dennett.) Trying to resolve the hard problem of consciousness with the resources of neuroscience and psychology isn't going to work.

Solms' writing is sometimes lucid and engaging and at other times it reads like a brutal attempt to batter the reader into submission. It has some of the worst passages of science writing I have ever encountered, but also some of the best. Roger Davis reads the book intelligently, but I found his voice a little grating. It's a voice better suited to less insistent and demanding works.